Category: novels

Update of November 17, 2025

I have recently decided to go ahead with my plans to create a second edition of my poetry collection, Nocturne (now available through Amazon). The second edition will include all the poems of the first edition plus some that were lost for many years….

It has been a long time since I last published anything and I miss publishing dearly. I enjoy it immensely and no small part of that enjoyment is working with all the hardworking contributors to both The Chamber and Rural Fiction Magazine. While The Chamber will not be returning in the foreseeable future, RFM may reappear in the near future. It is quite a time commitment, and I have to find a way to make it profitable. Your donations have been deeply appreciated . It means a lot to me to think that RFM was so well-liked that people would actually give of their hard-earned money to keep it afloat. I thank you all sincerely for that.

I have recently decided to go ahead with my plans to create a second edition of my poetry collection, Nocturne (now available through Amazon). The second edition will include all the poems of the first edition plus some that were lost for many years. I will also include the stories from my slim short story collection, The Scent and Other Stories, as they have some of the same themes as Nocturne. The second edition will be in three parts vs. just one as in the first edition. They will be Section A, Section B, and Coda (the stories). I chose this organization, because these are generally the components of a musical nocturne.

I am also putting more emphasis on my YouTube Channel. When I first started it, I knew nothing about producing videos. However, with a little experience and study, I have decided to resurrect it and see if I can make it profitable also. I am also working on a channel where I produce ambience videos. I enjoy the ambience videos produced by other YouTubers and I have finally decided to explore this field. I will provide updates in the coming months.

I am also finishing up my first novel, which will be a mystery/thriller/supernatural tale of a woman’s investigation into the cold case of the disappearance of one of her grandparents’ neighbors fifty years ago. I have settled on a title yet, but I hope to have one soon. The length is now about 60,000 words and I may add another 5,000 before wrapping it up.

Because I expect to finish both of these books soon, I am also searching in earnest for a agent. I have yet to approach one, but I have found a few possibilities.

That’s all I have for this update. I wish you all the very best.

Hasta luego.

Impressions on Re-Reading Nikolai Gogol’s “Dead Souls”: Characters

Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
1809-1852

Just a few quick notes:

As you may know, I have been listening to an audiobook of  Nikolai Gogol‘s Dead Souls for the second time, the first having been when I was in Russian lit class in college about 1978. I barely remember any of it from then except in a very broad, general fashion. But I remembered it was enjoyable and I remember one scene at the end of Book One (it’s divided into two books) where the protagonist is traveling across early nineteenth century Russia in his chaise with his coachman and valet in a very majestic, sweeping, epic moment as Gogol describes it.

I have been truly enjoying this like no other book I have read in the past twenty years. It is a terrific satire of not only nineteenth century Russian society, but of humanity as well. Indeed, the characters that Gogol describes are archetypes of certain types of people you probably see every day. You may well read one character’s dialog and think “I know someone just like that.” The characters are so vivid and distinctly different from each other that you can tell which character is speaking just by reading his words and their actions. There is one newlywed couple in a new home, where nothing has yet been finished being assembled or painted. This may be because they are so engrossed in and enchanted by each other, they don’t finish what they are doing. That may be because they kiss very frequently whenever they are together and they kiss so long that Gogol says you could “smoke a small cigar” while they kiss. There is another that is desperate for a friend and wants to become lifelong friends with anyone he meets. He also wants that friendship to be so intense that the Tsar will make them both general as a reward. There is another, a very fat, retired general, who pushes incredible amounts of food on his guests until they become so bloated they can hardly walk. Another is an incredible braggart who cheats at checkers and lies about his accomplishments and who he knows. There are many more.

Gogol must have had keen insight into human nature to be able to portray these people to bring them to life in the reader’s mind.

Anyway, I need to go now. I will post more later.